Immigration and migration are hot topics in the United States these days. And it’s no wonder, given the genuine crisis at the southern border. Considering my advocacy for the immigrant/diaspora church in the United States, I naturally have thoughts and opinions about this issue. What follows is my brief and unobjective view of the matter.
First of all, part of my opinion on this issue is personal. I was a foreign immigrant in someone else’s country for 23 years. We were often treated with uncommon kindness and welcome by our Bosnian neighbors inside the tiny Evangelical church community and outside, including most Muslim neighbors. But we also experienced suspicion, distrust, and, on rare occasions, open hostility. Naturally, we preferred the former to the latter. Living as a foreigner in a foreign land definitely shapes how I think about this issue and makes me sympathetic to the plight of desperate people seeking safety and a better life in the United States.
Now that we safely and happily reside in our home country, I am primarily interested in understanding and advocating for the diaspora/immigrant church in the USA. The learning curve has been steep as I explore the landscape of immigrant churches in Greater Louisville, Kentucky. In terms of immigrants to the United States, most of these churches from the Majority World of Africa, Asia, and Latin America were established by Christian men and women who came to the United States lawfully as refugees and who were resettled by US government through programs and partner agencies like Catholic Charities or Kentucky Refugee Ministries. Some entered via other legal pathways such as visa diversity lotteries, family reunification, and higher education. This past week, I met with an Ethiopian and Rwandan pastor who came here respectively through the visa lottery scheme and the latter for seminary education. But four other African pastors came here as persecuted Christian refugees, having spent years in camps outside their home country of the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Today, nearly any talk of immigration is inevitably linked to the escalating crisis at the USA-Mexico border. I don’t presume to know that answer to that catastrophe. Any nation needs reasonable border security. It is plum ridiculous to think that our country can reasonably function with open borders. It would be easy to oversimplify the causes and potential solutions to very complex situations. There are many factors at play. Decades-long political failure on the behalf of elected leaders to enact reasonable immigration reform is only one. More about that another time.
But for the Christian, another factor ultimately overrides all the others. And that is the sovereignty of God weaved into creation order and governing events and outcomes in ways that we can’t always see or understand. Indeed, it is correct to say that his ways are often inscrutable (Romans 11:33). My oft-repeated and favorite text in support of God’s active involvement in migration is Act 17:26. Paul is invited to speak at a meeting of the Areopagus, a forum for thought leaders and philosophers of the day. Among other things, he points out to these “very religious” people that “The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth…”. Moreover, in reference to where people live, he emphasizes that God also “…determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live. God did this so that men would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from each of us”.
But God’s sovereign governance in all things is not a license to do nothing nor to be uncaring about issues of national security or the plight of vulnerable immigrants and refugees. Still, we should be primarily responding to the issue of immigration from a Biblical perspective and not inflammatory political rhetoric. I’m reminded of a recent comparison between those halcyon days of Ronald Reagan and current presidential candidate remarks. In his farewell address in 1989, he referred to America as a “shining city on a hill” for the rest of the world: “And if there had to be city walls, the walls had doors, and the doors were open to anyone with the will and the heart to get there.” Contrast that with this recent debaters talk of zero amnesty and immigrants who are “poisoning the blood” of the country.
From a biblical perspective, the concept of nations is normal. They have always existed and are assumed. Nations also have an obligation to protect their national sovereignty for the sake of their citizens. But nations are temporary and not ultimate. For the Christian, the kingdom of God is ultimate. It does not negate the need for and reality of nations, but it does supersede them. It does so in at least two ways. First, the kingdom of God, where God reigns and rules, is spiritual and physical. It is physical or at least visible in the form of the Church. This church is globally connected and permeates all places where people meet in Jesus’ name (Matt 18:20). It exists now wherever people obey and worship Jesus. John Calvin said it is the task of the church to make this temporarily invisible kingdom visible. As a church, we must wrestle with this issue and respond to it from a Kingdom of God perspective. What might God be doing in this crisis? What are the kingdom opportunities for the church even as we hope for humane, effective security solutions?
Back to the church. First, the immigrant church in the United States is uniquely equipped to engage new immigrants arriving in our communities, whether documented or not. But all of us who follow Jesus are fundamentally obliged to figure out how to love our neighbor as ourselves. A few years before the current crisis, the non-partisan Public Religion Research Institute found that about six in ten Americans believe that immigrants strengthen the country. In contrast, a slight majority of evangelical Christians were more likely to view immigrants as a threat to traditional American values. This is especially ironic given our commitment to the authority of Scripture, emphasizing love and hospitality to the foreigner/immigrant. In fact, the idea of Biblical hospitality in the Greek of the New Testament comes from the word “philoxenos”, which literally means to the love (philo), the foreigner/immigrant (xenos).
I end with two inspiring and hopeful recent experiences. The first is an aging white Evangelical Protestant church that said yes to sharing it’s building and resources with five different immigrant churches (Haitian, Cuban, Congolese, Burmese, and Ethiopian). They have even formed a multi-congregational “fellowship of churches” sharing a building, resources, and decision making. Now, they seek to provide low-cost, DOJ-accredited immigration legal services to those seeking find or maintain their legal status. The second is a conversation I had with a Hispanic pastor reporting on the increased number of recent immigrants arriving in Louisville seeking a church home. Some are documented, and some are not. The point is, they are reaching out to the church and the church is responding with compassion, help, and good news. Both remind me of Jesus’ words: “…I was a stranger, and you invited me in…” (Matt 25:35).